Friday was the first time I noticed “New Moyvally Bridge”.
I was travelling the short commute home from my office in Enfield to my home in Broadford, Co. Kildare.
About halfway on my journey there is a place called Moyvalley and I think Moyvalley is a townland. And on the old N4-the road in use before the motorway to the west-heading between Enfield and Clonard you will come across a new bridge which spans the railway from Sligo to Dublin.
To the right, on an even older road you will find Furey’s pub and restaurant situated beside the railway line and Royal Canal.
What caught my attention on Friday, and again this morning on the opposite side of the road, was a sign which read “New Moyvally Bridge”. It immediately struck me as a misspelling or typographical error.
And I was incensed.
This is a sign. It is permanent and there is another one, with the same misspelling, on the opposite side of the road.
Words matter.
Nameplaces, places, parishes, villages, townlands, names matter.
Did nobody check this before commissioning the signs for the ‘new bridge’? Look at a map? Property records? Check online or with Google maps? Check with the postal service?
I found this intensely annoying. Moyvally is not a word or a place, I thought. It is the bastardisation or misspelling or butchering of a part of my homeplace.
It is not good enough, I said to myself.
Then, I checked on the Property Registration Authority website and looked at some Land Registry folios and discovered that “Moyvally” is the spelling used for the townland on all the folios I checked.
Every day is a school day.
I am glad I checked and did not launch a one man campaign to have the spelling changed. Further research is required before I launch!